


Like Real People Do

by Incalyscent



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Gen, You'll cry, i cried, morally just playthrough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-08 23:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3226973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Incalyscent/pseuds/Incalyscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which this author had to validate their choice in Adamant Fortress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Real People Do

It no longer hurt.

It wasn’t just the physical pain, either. He feels relived, like an incredible weight has been lifted from him like a rider unseated from a horse, hard and violent, yet with a stunned peace directly afterwards. The place where he awakes is full of bright, white light, and he vaguely realizes he is laying on his back. He sits up, shaking his head slightly to try and clear it. He is a bit foggy, and he doesn’t quite remember how he got here. It takes him a little while to register the ornately armored legs in front of him, and the feint smell of pine and soot mixing in the air. Alister blinks his eyes, before following the glimmering metal with his gaze. When his eyes reach her face, he feels he must be dreaming, but he decides to ask anyways.

“Zara?” he rasps, and his throat is dry, how long had he been asleep? However, any notions of this being a dream fly out the window as soon as Zara smiles. He can’t help but let his own grin crack his face at the sight of her, her irises like ice against her skin like the very earth itself. He had always said that Zara was like the elements coming together in one final push at peace.

“Well,” she starts to say, and the Dalish accent in her voice only makes Alister grin wider, if it were possible, “it’s about time you showed up, it was getting pretty boring up here,” and as soon as the words are past her lips Alister is up with his arms around her, his nose in the crook of her neck. She laughs, her smaller frame a gentle shake against his own.

“Don’t you get sappy on me, you know I hurt people when I cry,” she says, but her voice is already shaky, and Alister is crying but he’s laughing as well, because Maker, he missed her so much. But there was a question burning at the back of his mind that he’s sure he knows the answer to, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

“So, I’m dead right?” he says, and it’s quiet, murmured in Zara’s pointed ear.

“Yes, darling.”

“Great, fantastic. Do you know how?” how could she, she was dead too.

“Of course. You think I’d let you go off on your own for a second? Gods, you’d kill yourself and everyone in Fereldan ten times over,” she laughs, and Alister is almost startled into a statue.

She had been dead for ten years, and she had watched over him for all that time.

“Anyways, you went physically into the fade with some lad they called the Inquisitor, a good Dalish boy may I add, and you fought off some massive demon to allow them to escape,” she says, and her hand has come up to stroke the golden hairs at the nape of his neck, voice low in his ear.

“You died a hero,” she speaks again after some time, and there’s proudness in her tone. Alister laughs, though it is quiet.

“Finally worthy of you, I guess,” he says, and she responds with a little scoff.

“Honey, you know very well I’d be dead way before my actual time without you. I’m best friends with Zevran.”

He almost cuts her off with a chaste kiss to her lips. He pulls back to see her face, and her raised eyebrows are exaggerated by the light lines of tattoo on her dark skin, like they had always been. His mouth twitches into that awkward grin of his, something his face hasn’t done in years.

“Sorry, I just…really missed doing that,” he says, and Zara is on him again in no seconds flat, their mouths pressed together in sweet kiss. When they break away, both are breathless and beaming, and Zara cups Alister’s stubble-rough jaw and presses their foreheads together, him stooping slightly and her up slightly on her toes.

Alister had persevered for ten years after the Blight. The loss of his lover, and eventually his fame, the mistrust of the Wardens, whom he had so badly to serve in the memory of Duncan. Eventually, he died, as he had expected to, and he had died saving the world, like he would have ten years prior if Zara had not saved him. For this, he cannot be sad, and certainly not when he can spend the rest of his eternity with the woman he loves.

**Author's Note:**

> why doesn't ao3 like tab tbh? anyway, i'm glad that this is off my chest. enjoy.
> 
> name from the song of the same title by Hozier.


End file.
